Women in Greece challange Medieval law

Originally posted by Anton Well, I do not know. I found St.Panteleimon monastery in a list of Russian Patriarchy churches abroad.

Yes, Panteleimon is Russian...One of the most glorious monasteries of the past hosting up to 2000 monks and workers around the 18th century.

Certainly Antioxos; it's always a pleasure to be asked to translate. It goes like this:

Originally posted by Anton Well, I do not know. I found St.Panteleimon monastery in a list of Russian Patriarchy churches abroad.

Edited by Akolouthos - 15-Jan-2008 at 17:04

Originally posted by Anton Also, not all monasteries belong to Greek Orthodox Church. As far as I know there are Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian monasteries there.

Wrong. All the monasteries in the Mountain are jurisdictionaly dependent og Constantinople patriarchy.

Traditionaly, some of the monasteries are peopled each one mostly by one of the Orthodox peoples.

Panteleimon by Russians (at the beginning of 20th century there were 1500 monks), actualy today more by Ukrainians (some tens), Zographos by Bulgarians, Chilandar by Serbs. In the past Cutlumus was peopled by Romanians and Iviron Georgians but they were all of Greek origin and actualy Greek monasteries.

Today the Romanians are concentrated in the Prodromu skete (is big and looking like a monastery but its status is of skete), Lacu skete (a hermitage village) and Vatopedion, where there is the bigest group of Romanians (70, if I'm not wrong). Prodromu belongs to the Lavra monastery and the Romanian community is one of most enthuziast. Romanians are spread too in other monasteries and hermitages.

Also, not all monasteries belong to Greek Orthodox Church. As far as I know there are Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian monasteries there.

4 pages. About peeing in Buckhingham palace, about gays seducing monks, about Monks having impure thoughts about cats. God almighty!.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn Look, I have to ask something to Aelf & Mix: Why do you care?

I know it's far away and whatever I think of it is completely irrellevant, but that doesn't mean I am not allowed to have an opinion about it.

Insisting on having an opinion about everything is a typically Dutch deviation.

Wow, this thread has evolved much since I posted last!

Now, if anyone cares to hear my oppinion, having visited Mt. Athos (as a pilgrim):
Mt. Athos is a peninsula, with virgin nature. It has something like 30 medieval monasteries. It used to have some villages in ancient times, but in the middle ages it barely had any population. It was declared by the Byzantine law as an autonomous holy region, where only monasteries should exist. Till this day Mt. Athos doesn't have permanent villages (apart from a tiny port with a toll post, and  the governmental center, with the governmental buildings and some inns). The autonomity of Mt.Athos was respected by the Ottomans who conquered the area, and then by the Greek state who occupied it in the early 20th cent. The mountain doesn't have anything apart from monasteries and their dependant facilities (including isolated monks etc) and paths through the forests to connect them.
Females and young males are not allowed. Typically tourists are also not allowed. Anyone who goes there is either a pilgrim or a worker (to help build new infrastructure, or maintain the ancient monasteries). You have got to get permission to enter, for a limited number of days, and find in which monasteries you will stay.
In the monastery the monks treat you not like a tourist, but as a pilgrim. You stay in cells (in the first monastery I went we were 20 strangers in one big cell, with one toillet). The monks wake you up in 3 or 4 am in the morning (mind you, they use byzantine hour system there), and you all go to the central church to pray. At 8.00 am you are called to eat in a large hall with big tables, with all the monks , mostly bean soup, with a fruit, and wine. Later, the monks attain their jobs, which is mostly farming for supplies for the monastery, while the pilgrims are free. After 8.00 pm the gates are closed, and you can see only absolute darkness out of the cell's window.
Life follows medieval ways. The monasteries are all medieval. Some don't have electicity everywhere (the church of Megisti Lavra had only candles, which at 4.00 am with all the black dressed monks making a circle create a mystical and surreal picture).

I personally feel that forbidding women from entering may be  a little  sexist and unfair. But on the other had, as someone already said, these people were already there.
Do women feel the religious need to visit holy places? They are free to do so, in the Holy Lands, on in verious monasteries of the world. Mt.Athos has nothing SO special.
Do women (and their men) simply have materialistic motives (as in this case to take some of the virgin uncultivated land belonging to the monasteries to make farmlands out of them, and make money?) I won't help them, that's for sure.
Do women feel simply they need to attack and invade this territory? That's simply as unjustified as a country attacking another with no casus belli, -they have to respect the will of these free people. Nonetheless, the Greek state (and I guess the whole orthodox world) will be there to protect them.

Unless the leaders of Mt.Athos decide to allow women, I think every effort to abolish the Avaton (by the EU or feminist organizations) is a direct violation of these people's rights.


Edited by xristar - 14-Jan-2008 at 15:08

I am not sure I understand you. I expressed my point of view. If you don't like it is your right.

I thought you were eluding to the fact that the Orthodox church was backwards and needed to update it's belief system to allow women onto Mt. Athos. I was merely stating that progression isn't always positive, the germanic tribes decimating Rome were quick and progressive yet they didn't necessarily improve Roman authority now did they? If I have offended it was not my intend looking at the statement it does seem a bit harsh, trust me it's more sarcastic than threatening.

Neither you can prove this nor I can prove the opposite.

Certainly it's occured many times in the past. A church who cannot maintain its authority in the eyes of the people will lose those people to other churches. Although I guess technically backwards is a subjective term, I meant it in the fact that traditions are less appealing than other available faiths.

What does it mean "must"? Who determines this "must"?

Basically the body of worshippers chooses when a church must change because if a church doesn't change when the churches community does it loses the community to another religion.

In addition to women ministers es_bih from your own link....

It is therefore not likely that men would view female preachers as credible sources for new religious ideas. Because of those attitudes, women had to support the gospel in other ways.

Thus it is highly unlikely that women would be recognized as legitimate ministers of Christ.

Saul apparently viewed Christian women as a serious threat to Jewish orthodoxy, probably because they were spreading the gospel to other women.

This statement makes the question of women ministers moot because it is not the "early christian church", in the context of an unbroken line of christian tradition. Rather this could be construed as a segment of long extinct heresies and schisms in the Christian church. Gnostics had women preachers are we to include them into the current Christian church?

Since Lydia had a successful business and owned the meeting location, it is probably safe to say that she was influential in the church, but Luke does not give her a formal title.

This is exactly keeping with the role of women in the Christian church, no formal titles of authority, but a role in guiding that authority, much the same as a president's wife influences certain decisions.

Since diakonos can mean either deacon or servant, some translations have chosen �deacon� (e.g., NRSV), while others have chosen �servant� (NIV) or �minister� (NAB). If a man had been called �a diakonos of the church,� most translators would have used the word �deacon,�[6] but some translators do not believe that the early church had female deacons and therefore choose �servant.�

I would not dispute the fact that women were deaconesses but they had a far different role than that of deacons in the church. Mostly they were in charge of teaching women Christianity in a culture where sexual division was high.

As the person who carried the letter to Rome, Phoebe may have been asked to read the letter aloud to the assembled believers, and she may have been expected to convey verbal greetings from Paul and answer questions about what Paul may have meant by any phrases the audience found confusing.

I have acted as a lecter for my church on numerous occasions, this does not make me an authority figure in the church and neither does it make women authority figures.

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Also this source the Worldwide Church of God is an organization less than a hundred years old with a membership less than 50,000 people. Also it is a self-proclaimed evangelic church meaning that trappings of sola scriptura are the main source of faith. This means that they reject the evolution of Christianity as a world religion and instead rely just on the static and convuluted works of the Bible to define their doctrine.